It is common for businesses and homeowners to have a security system for detecting alarm conditions at their premises and reporting these to a monitoring station. One of the primary functions of the monitoring station is to notify a human operator when one or more alarm conditions have been sensed by detectors installed at a monitored premise.
Detectors may vary from relatively simple hard-wired detectors, such as door or window contacts to more sophisticated battery operated ones, such as motion and glass break detectors. The detectors may all report to an alarm control panel at the premises. The control panel is typically installed in a safe location and is connected to a power supply. The control panel is further in communication with the individual detectors to communicate with or receive signals from individual detectors. The communication between the alarm control panel and the detectors can be one or two way, and may be wired or wireless.
Communication between the premises and the monitoring station is typically effected using any of a number of communications networks, including the public switched telephone network (PSTN); a cellular telephone or data network; a packet switched network (e.g. the Internet), or the like.
Recently, equipping the premises with audio microphones and speakers to communicate with the monitoring station has become commonplace. Microphones provide audio signals, representing audio sensed at the microphone to the monitoring station, thereby allowing the monitoring station to monitor audio at the premises in case of an alarm condition. The speakers, in turn, allow an operator at the monitoring station to speak with the premises in real-time. Conveniently, an operator at the monitoring station may listen and react to events at a monitored premise, as they occur. For example, the operator at the monitoring station may speak to an occupant or intruder upon being notified of an alarm condition.
Unfortunately, events giving rise to the alarm condition, or those occurring immediately after sensing of the alarm condition may be most critical. Often audio associated with these is not heard by an operator at the central monitoring station as an audio channel to the operator may not yet have been established, or the audio channel may not have been routed to an operator, or the operator may simply not react quickly enough in focusing his/her attention to the audio channel.
Accordingly, there remains a need for methods and devices that allow better capture of audio related to sensed alarm conditions in alarm systems.